Organizing the research on school leadership into a set of principles that current and future school leaders can use to guide their behavior obviously requires that we stand on the shoulders of those who have made similar efforts. In this chapter we briefly review some of the more prominent theories and theorists on leadership. In subsequent chapters you will find that much of what we found in our meta-analysis strongly supports the major elements of these theories and theorists.

Some Prominent Theories

Many theories of leadership have been influential in guiding school leaders. Here we examine a few of the theories that were foundational to our analysis of the research.

Transformational and Transactional Leadership